Not familiar with Kernel maintainers but do some never take full 2-week long holidays??
In the US, a decent company will give you three weeks total vacation. To get more than that can require decades of service (eg four weeks after 10 years with the company). To “squander” two thirds of the allotment in one go is rare.
Was at a boring company for a long time, because it paid well enough and I had 6 weeks PTO that rolled over and even paid out when maxed. I turned down a lot of job offers because I valued that.
As you can imagine with the enshittification of literally everything in my lifetime, that moved to use it or lose it eventually. Then two years later, getting rid of it for 'unlimited PTO, how cool is that guys?'
Needless to say, that was the end of my run there.